Hortus Conclusus — “enclosed garden,” a metaphor for an inner space where silence and beauty are preserved despite the chaos of the outside world. In the Middle Ages it symbolized purity and a place of inner retreat. Today, in an era when “the bond of times has broken” and Giorgio Agamben’s pressing question “What does it mean to be contemporary?” resonates so strongly, this image gains new relevance. Is it not untimely art that is truly contemporary? Art that, at first glance, seems to be delayed may, in fact, be ahead of its time. It reminds us of the necessity to cultivate our inner garden — inviolable and untraceable.

The music of Arvo Pärt and Maxim Shalygin creates precisely such a space. Their works exist outside fashionable movements — outside the avant-garde, postmodernism, or academic schools. This is music that seems “untimely”: it requires concentration and depth, a detachment from everyday noise.

Arvo Pärt’s music forms a unique world, shaped by his own tintinnabuli style. In it, one hears the strict simplicity of minimalism and, at the same time, the echoes of medieval sacred harmony.

Maxim Shalygin, on the other hand, works with extreme intensity: critics sometimes jokingly call his style “maximalism.” His music draws from the tradition of classical composition, yet unfolds with such expression and demands on the performers that it becomes an alloy of beauty, passion, and virtuosic technique. And behind this force lies an astonishing delicacy, a refined contemporary sensitivity.

Perhaps this is the classical music of the future — music of which we are today both contemporaries and witnesses.

What unites them is the sense that their work may be seen as the cultivation of a garden: a patient and demanding labor, requiring attention and inner discipline. At the entrance to such a garden, one might imagine a plaque of invitation: “In this garden you may bring your own flowers.”

This musical experience resonates with the installation of Thessy Schoenholzer Nichols, curator, conservator, and exhibition designer, whose specialization in medieval and Renaissance burial garments as well as textile history and material culture reflects a profound scholarly depth. In her work, miniature gardens and plants are placed in an artistic context and brought to life through light. Their silhouettes are projected onto the walls, turning into the breath of music. Thus emerges a unique atmosphere — a sounding garden (Klanggarten), where nature and sound merge into a single experience.

Concert and exhibition-installation here unite into one: Hortus Conclusus unfolds as a Klanggarten — a world that dares to be untimely contemporary.

Program:

Arvo Pärt 

Für Alina

Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka

Fratres

Maxim Shalygin

To All in Love

To All Resurrected

Arvo Pärt

Spiegel im Spiegel

Maxim Shalygin

Kaya

Duet